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Chapter 22
3/31/02 Over the past month or so I've been
getting together what I would need to continue the project and trying to decide
exactly what made sense. I had to spend some bucks to get the radiator redone.
No way around that one, but this time, I also spent $26 and got an electric fan
from a Taurus. Got rid of the steel fan entirely. With the mondo radiator and
a thermostat switch on the electric, I should be ok. It is mounted in front of
the radiator and pulls the heat and air forward . I had to remove a
radiator bulkhead spreader bar to mount it and when I did that the
fenders suddenly became 3/4 inches further apart. To get it all to fit together
again, I had to run a threaded rod between the right and left fenderwalls and
tighten down. The fan really moves air, but also uses the amps and requires
heavy wire and a big circuit breaker. One thing leads to another, and I decided
to bite the bullet and get going on the brakes and clutch.
Stalling on this, I first made up some
brackets and mounted the leather (and electric)
bucket seats.
They feel great and fit the TurboStude as well as they fit the LeBaron they mere
mouldering in....
Stalling over, I got to work on the brakes.
Dave Levesque sold me some Chrysler
calipers and
adapters which I was going to use to put discs on the 53'. Haven't gotten
around to it, and since the TS has spindles from a 54', I knew they would fit.
Well, the way this works, one needs to take the hub off the front brake drums
(it is riveted together) and then chuck the hubs in a lathe to face them off so
they can be
assembled with the big chevy rotors which are used. The hubs also needed to
be drilled for the right
bolt pattern if
it is different, and the holes need to be a size which will allow a press-fit
of wheel studs. When I got to the point where the calipers were to be bolted
on, I found that they didn't have enough clearance with the steering arms. I
needed to grind down some bosses which are cast into the calipers. These are
symmetric castings which when drilled, allow the caliper to be either a right
or left and if undrilled, they are just unnecessary. With the car up in
the air on jack stands, the front suspension was completely off the ground, and
the brake hoses were too short. I sent an e-mail to Raybestos describing the
problem, and they promptly wrote back with the part number for just the right
length. I had been debating about whether to go to a dual master, but couldn't
decide until I tried the brakes after adding the discs. They wouldn't release,
and I realized that I'd need to disable the check valve in the original. This
is needed when the master is lower than the brakes as in
under-floor installations. I
took the whole works out and will hunt for a dual master to mount on a
fabricated bracket in the original location.
Master Power Brake has a good site for evaluating needs, and it looks like
I'll need to add a 2# residual check valve in front and a 10# in the back, as
well as a combination valve and maybe a
proportioner valve
(adjustable) to keep the rear from locking up too easily. More than I was
counting on, but probably a good idea..... This is still without power brakes,
but Dave and a friend have run similar setups without hard braking.
Couldn't stall any longer. Started to
remove the clutch. To do this, I needed to unbolt the starter, pull off the
transmission and remove the housing first. This is taking forever, as the 10
bolts holding the tranny crossmember are difficult to reach, low profile (easy
to strip) and totally rusted.
4/9/02 The crossmember finally gave way to
my ministrations and was so filthy, I sent
it and the
now easily removed
bellhousing
off to be sandblasted. The clutch, which has 300 or so miles on it, is
toast.... The disk is worn
down to the rivets,
and showed signs of
warping (it was new). The pressure plate shows signs of "distemper"
and the flywheel itself heated up enough to show some "frost-heaves" which the
resurfacing company says can be
surface-ground
mostly away. I guess the big question is whether this would happen again
with the new improved clutch. Maybe the combination of the 3.40 rear-end and
the overdrive (which may have somehow been left engaged on start-up) was just
too much, but now, I'd expect the car to buck or judder and just stall if the
gearing was too tall. Never, ever, could I get that to happen, even when the
clutch was fresh. Maybe this was masked by the free-wheeling feature in the
tranny....
Found that a late 60's early 70's Mustang
dual master could be made to fit under the floor-boards. I am making a
mounting bracket
to use the original
holes. This will set the axis a bit inboard
1
2
3
4 , and
I'll need to compensate with some kind of
offset
clevis rod
set-up from the brake pedal lever. Stock master comparison:
1
2
3
4
Master mod
Wired up the fan with 10 gauge wire, a 20
amp circuit breaker and a thermostat switch. That fan really draws the amps....
I need to use a relay to run it, and still need to find a thermostatic switch
(hopefully from some derilect car at the junkyard) to turn it on and off.
